That’s what I hear from Alison Krauss when we talk on the phone one Friday morning in May. Robert Plant is the short shorts-wearing man in question. He quickly joins the conference call, apologizes profusely for being a few minutes late, and states that he is calling from a 14th-century castle close to the Welsh border, “where Richard III planned the demise of his entire family.” This sounds a lot like another Robert Plant location.
We’ve gathered to talk about Krauss and Plant’s summer tour, which began in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Sunday, June 2, and will visit 36 more locations in the United States and Canada over the course of the following three months. Ten of these performances are part of the Outlaw Music Festival tour with Bob Dylan, Celisse, and Willie Nelson & Family.
Regarding their recent summertime road trip, Plant remarks, “I think it started off very tentatively.” After being apart for so long, Alison and I were quite reluctant about the whole concept, but as it came together, it felt really natural. Additionally, there are areas where you can play, and if you don’t, someone else will. Following the publication of their second joint album, Raise the Roof, in 2021, the two have been touring together for the past three summers. The album was released fourteen years after Raising Sand, their breakthrough project that took home the 2009 Grammy for album of the year. The pair covered songs by musicians as diverse as The in both projects.
Much has been said about the odd couple aspect in the pairing of the bluegrass country singer and rock’s prototypical golden god when it first surfaced at the end of the CD era. Plant reiterates this point when he claims that working with Krauss has taught him “humility” and the kind of vocal discipline that was not always necessary when he was shredding the warrior screams on “Immigrant Song.” Krauss describes her and Plant as “definitely yin and yang” over the phone today.
